Enemies' Taste
by MuddyWolf
Summary: Wrath hates the Elrics and the feeling is mutual. During an uncomfortable tea..


This was the second time that they had been summoned to Bradley's office. To _Wrath's_ office, the alchemist recalled—with both frustration-and contempt. The Fuhrer wasn't a _person,_ a human, and all this time he had been pretending to be one, even going so far to lie to his own family, his wife and son.

Even while making nice with his kid, Bradley had reminded them of the constant chokehold that those monsters had on Winry-

"Something bothering you, Elric?"

"No sir," the state alchemist answered plainly. Al mirrored him, shaking his head-helmet with a clank, a little too quickly. Both of them knew to speak to the Homunculus with propriety—any open hostility on their part would just endanger her. The red-wearing adolescent felt the cold, metallic elbow of his brother jab against his ribs. The armor coughed, nudging him again. He could barely stop the color draining out of his face when he realized that the two train tickets slipping out of his sleeve— "Going up North, are you?"

Damnit. This guy could read their destination from that far away? Of course he could. These damn Homunculi…always one step ahead… Al intervened, hastily jumping on Ed's answer—he could tell his brother was losing his cool.

"Yes, sir, we're going there to find a way to get our bodies back.." Alphonse reminded Wrath quickly, "We've done everything you've asked.." It was too desperate, the Fuhrer was bound to suspect something-

"Not everything." Wrath disentangled his large, calloused hands and rapped the table with a finger.

Ed couldn't rein himself any longer—and to Al's horror, his brother's eyes narrowed and he raised his voice, closing an auto-mail fist and slamming it onto the table, causing both teacups—and two cardboard boxes –items that had adorned the table when they had first entered the office—to clatter, nearly spilling onto the table.

"Ed..!" the armor raised his hands, mortified. Now they were in trouble.

The old man's mustache folded downwards. "You haven't touched the food. Please. Eat." The Homunculus emphasized those words in such a way that it was nothing less than a threat.

Ed acquiesced, still giving the Fuhrer a hard, resentful look from across the table. The boy looked down in front of him, feeling Wrath's one-eyed stare burying into his head the entire time. The cardboard box looked innocuous enough-

It's probably not poisoned. They need us for their sacrifice, after all, the alchemist reasoned as he took the ends of the box and lifted the corners—releasing a strong smell of-salt water?

"This smells like it came from the sea," Ed observed in surprise—that very surprise diluted the ill feeling. "Correct, Elric. Caught from the sea of Aerugo." Wrath opened his own box, taking the fork and holding it above the food in a utilitarian way. Ed continued observing the Aerugian food, chin in hand, breaking down the component parts out of scientist's habit—saltwater fish in the center, some kind of grain rolled around it, wrapped with an alien-looking vegetable.

Al clanked as his attraction to good food (that he couldn't eat) undercut the tension weighing down on both of the brothers.

"Um..sir? Is this what you wanted us to do?"

"_You're_ unable to," Wrath's stare sharpened on the distraught armor. "Your brother hasn't eaten it yet," Wrath's tone became more unpleasant, more threatening, almost a growl. To refuse him was unwise. But to delay humoring him was more so.

The older of the two alchemists came to his senses and hastily took the fork on his side and picked up the strange food. He eyed it one last time, rotating the fish-vegetable roll—no longer wondering if it was poisoned, but—

_It better not have any milk in it._ (Stew excepting)

Ed closed his mouth onto the fish-vegetable roll, chewing with his eyes shifting up towards the ceiling, appraising the taste. The alchemist was well aware that given the circumstances, he should eat the roll with more urgency, but no, he had a scrap of pride left despite being the state's dog—and he was going to enjoy the free meal, damnit.

"Well?" Wrath asked, wrinkled brow creased with impatience, taking another bite of his roll. The younger of the two alchemists looked straight ahead and tried not to look on with a subdued envy. And somehow the fact that Ed was being forced to eat it didn't take Al's mind off of how good the fish roll must have smelled and tasted.

"It's good," Ed said in an even way, though his taste-buds and stomach were—well, overjoyed. Spicy, the right amount of salt combined with the vibrant vegetables—wasn't bland at all. Ed started on the next one in the box, the fish rolled up in a weird grain instead of vegetables. Ed pushed the food to the side of his mouth, his cheek moving around in a bulge as he asked, "What's this called, sir?"

Wrath subjected the human to renewed scrutiny, piercing him with his green eye. Elric did not appear to be lying that he liked it just because he was being coerced to eat—those two humans' forthrightness never ceased to baffle him. But for once-he was—happy that Elric was so honest.

Because Pride did not share his affinity towards this food—he could not get his wife to enjoy it either—and somewhere along the way he had absorbed that annoying human trait that causes them to despise being alone in their tastes.

So at seeing that hint of enjoyment on Elric's face, those permanently slanted eyebrows curved, and the hostile burning in his eye turned to a light gleam. He had found this food after all, had found it on his own-a small triumph-trivial, perhaps, over his passive existence of preplanned drudgery, answered Elric's question with a rare pride and a rarer innocuousness that was for once sincere:

"Takeout sushi."


End file.
